She holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.Ed. from the University of Vermont.

Kauppila's immersion in Chinese painting has awakened a sense of fragility; her work explores the use of line and color as tendrils of tension while embodying a sense of wonderment for the natural and industrial worlds. She challenges the notion of context, forcing the viewer to confront the abrupt beauty of life and death through the explosive movements in color, line and depth.

CONVERSATIONS: THE POWER OF CURIOSITY Nissa Kauppila and Walter Wick explore what it means to be curious and consider the ways in which curiosity has shaped their personal and professional lives. Moderated by Fran Stoddard.

The work of American artist Nissa Kauppila is full of tantalising contradictions.

With birds and wings as her frequent subjects and Chinese ink and watercolour as her medium of choice, Kauppila captures fleeting moments of ‘chaos’ - a flutter of feathers, a flash of motion in the air, elements exploding or forming together - with a surprising serenity.

The fragile beauty of these split seconds is in this way frozen in time, calling to mind the transient nature of life and defying it at the same time. 

— clarissa tam

Current Art Management and Gallery Representation

Kauppila’s paintings are and have been exhibited internationally in Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, Singapore, South Korea, Tawain, London, Hamburg, Barcelona, Singapore, South Korea, Tawain, and The USA. She currently has gallery representation in mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United States.

Commentary on Kauppila’s Work

Vermont-based artist Nissa Kauppila explores the transitory relationship between the bird, the brain, and the eye in her series in gouache. Feathered bodies distend in long, comet-like trails; vaporous wings and pointed feet bleed across the page like the lingering, smokey residue of a small explosion. Kauppila’s paintings are faithful not to the anatomy of a great blue heron or a wood duck, but to what it’s like to experience those species, briefly and gloriously. Her work isn’t as literal as James Audubon’s, but it’s just as true.

— Ben Goldfarb, Sage Magazine

Thanks to her sensitivity to the environment, she captures various forms of life she discovered in nature and transforms them into her paintings.

Her artwork delineates not only one particular state of life, but the whole journey the creature goes through. For instance, she can vividly portray the life cycle of a flower- from a seed to blossoming, and finally withering and fall.